Dream comes true for classical fan Guy Garvey
WHEN Guy Garvey introduced the Manchester International Festival collaboration between his multi-award-winning band Elbow and the Hallé Orchestra, he was beaming from ear to ear.
“This is a dream come true,” he said. “The Hallé are the original Manchester band and I’ve been going to see them and hear them since I was just a kid. My grandad used to take me and then my sister. They’re one of the reasons I’m proud to be from Manchester.”
Joe Duddell, who is orchestrating and conducting this historic collaboration, is just as enthusiastic.
“I’ve loved Elbow’s music for years so it’s incredibly exciting to be working with them.
Winning awards
“The fact that it’s at this stage in their career, when the world seems to have caught up with them and they’re winning awards everywhere just makes it even better. But the collaboration began before all that happened.”
“The original idea of doing something with the Hallé came up last year, around the time of their 150th anniversary,” says Guy.
“They were asking if we would be up for something, then the International Festival came along and made it possible.”
From the outset, it was clear that this was to be a proper collaboration between these two great Manchester bands.
“We were very keen that the orchestra should do more than just be a backing track. They’re the Hallé, after all, so it’s a pretty big deal.
Nick Drake
Playing with the Hallé is like flying on Concorde or driving a Rolls Royce – it’s class,” says Guy.
But how had it worked in practice, I wondered. Who, for instance, decided exactly which songs to do?
“The songs pretty much chose themselves,” says Salford University graduate Duddell, whose MySpace page lists his influences as ‘in no particular order – Tippett, Stravinsky, New Order, The Smiths, Sibelius, VW, Sigur Ros, Radiohead, Britten, Copeland, Elbow, Steve Reich, Steve Martland, Louis Andriessen, Joy Division, The National, and Nick Drake’ – not a bad list, by anyone’s standards.
“We wanted to make this something special and unique,” says Duddell.
“Guy had this idea that he wanted the concert to be like a love song to his hometown as much as anything, so there were some Elbow songs that immediately suggested themselves.
Northern sound
“They’re so Mancunian as a band. You can hear it in Guy’s voice, his lyrics. It’s definitely a northern sound. It’s a great thing for the city to put us together.”
So the shows will include songs from all four Elbow albums, as distinct from their considerably less-ambitious (if more record company-friendly) collaboration earlier this year with the BBC Concert Orchestra, where they played their Mercury Prize-winning album The Seldom Seen Kid.
Duddell has composed an introduction to open the concert, dotted with Elbow melodies (‘to see how many people spot!’) and has added orchestral variations to Weather to Fly, which is due to close the first half.
There is also the promise of the appearance of several, as-yet-unnamed local heroes.
“This Hallé gig was planned before that BBC thing and of course we saved the best stuff for the northern crew,” Guy laughs.
“If you try to do the full rock thing with an orchestra, you’re in danger of it getting a bit Meatloaf, with the orchestra as a backing band.
“We all recognised that was a potential problem and we wanted to avoid falling into that trap. So we’re stripping back what we’re doing and meeting in the middle.”
“You don’t do things to the songs for no reason,” agrees Duddell. “I wanted to complement the songs but also add something new. It’s a fine line between a good arrangement and something really cheesy.
“What he’s written brings the lyric a little closer to home. It is so exposed but so lush,” reassures Guy, who admits that he was ‘terrified’ at the first rehearsal.
“I had that shaky, adrenaline-y, nerves thing, which makes you more emotional and a lot of the songs we’ve chosen are the emotional, weighty ones anyway.
“When you hear a song you’ve written being played by the orchestra, it’s like it turns into a different thing. Yet it’s also so familiar that you’re immediately comfortable with it.
“At our first rehearsal with the Hallé, I looked around the room and thought, I know all this lot from the Briton’s Protection.
“Nowhere in the last 20 years anywhere in the world have I encountered standards of musicianship like the ones the Hallé display. It makes me even prouder of the city we live in.
“This is something I will tell my grandchildren about when I take them to the orchestra.”
Elbow and The Hallé Orchestra, orchestrated and conducted by Joe Duddell, are at Bridgewater Hall on Wednesday and Thursday. 7.30pm. SOLD OUT.
Published: Tue, 08 July, 2008
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